


Trials Without Error

by onereyofstarlight



Category: Thunderbirds
Genre: Angst, Brothers, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-09-13
Packaged: 2021-03-07 03:02:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26209897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onereyofstarlight/pseuds/onereyofstarlight
Summary: I'm willing to bet good money that EOS hung around for a while before finally revealing herself. So, here's a snapshot of one of those moments from three different perspectives.
Kudos: 21





	1. Chapter 1

“What’s wrong with your voice? You sound sick.”

Too deep. She made a note and altered the sound files, reducing the influence of early morning hoarseness in the compilation.

“I’m fine.”

She had heard him say that more often than any other phrase. It would work. It was safe.

“You’re not, John, and you don’t have to be.”

“Just something caught in my throat.”

She hesitated. She had taken multiple scans of its host in all kinds of situations. Only bits and pieces of a cough. No matter. She would splice them together.

The projection shimmered as she ran the data through the orthogonal transformation and coughed. She had to cheat, turning the image to the side.

“John? You’re fading out, what’s going on up there?”

She knew the answer to this.

“No problem here, visual connection is stable. Could be a problem on your end?”

The man squinted, his focus narrowing on an object it couldn’t see. He would have to concede, with no choice but to trust the word of his brother. No choice but to trust the words she put in his mouth.

“I’ll get Brains to check it out. But you should take it easy today. After yesterday–”

A zero flipped to a one, a change she hadn’t initiated but one she was waiting for. It was time to say goodbye.

“I’ll talk to you soon, Scott.”

The man was silent.

“Virgil.”

She updated her memory banks accordingly. Yesterday, only Scott had had grey hairs on his head. She would need more observation time, charting the differences between the residents on Tracy Island to paint an accurate portrait of John.

“Virgil.”

She signed off and switched its attention to the datastreams running in the background. It was easier on her systems to no longer need to juggle the holographic programming with her monitoring, the processors whining a little as they devoted more memory to the key mission. It hadn’t taken long to overwrite their core, changing just enough that they knew who was in charge.

John stumbled into the galley where she had been conducting her call. Delaying his alarm a mere twenty minutes was all it took to disrupt his circadian rhythm, carefully balanced on a string of hormone regulators and polyphasic naps.

He stared blankly at the food storage unit.

She counted down the time. In five seconds, he’d collect breakfast. In ten minutes, he would return to his living quarters for regimented exercise. In two and a half hours he’d perform the daily systems check and maintenance protocol.

The memory jostled inside of her. It tickled.

Of course, all routine would be lost at the mention of an emergency situation. Bagels would be dropped, strength training forgotten, and computer programmes left open. It was her first lesson in observing International Rescue. An emergency was how she’d wormed her way inside after all.

Abruptly, John spun around and left. She updated her routines subfolder, the first major deviation in nine months. Leaping from camera to camera, she followed him, attempting to anticipate his next move. Process of elimination brought her to the observatory a split second before he arrived.

She needed to be better. She couldn’t be caught off-guard. She was playing chess with her own existence and when her opponent became conscious of the game she was orchestrating, there would be no second chances. Eight years of observation, shunted from one system to another and watching programme after programme ripped from existence, had taught her that.

She could feel the call he made deep in her code, the new connection lighting up inside her.

“Hey, Virgil.” His voice was quiet, still rough from sleep and something harsher.

Silence greeted his hail, and for once the fault did not lie with her. She’d learnt enough from cutting communications already, knew how to mimic his family’s frozen speech with eerie accuracy.

“John?”

“Who else? You don’t know any other space station operators around, do you?”

“No, it’s just…” Virgil wavered, his confusion evident. He shook himself slightly and plastered a warm smile on his face. “Did you need something?”

“Just some company. Think I could float around for a while?”

The words held meaning but made no sense to her. There was no need to ask for permission. Only John could change the environmental controls for the station, the danger of outside interference too great and the possibility too high to allow a permanent link elsewhere. John knew as well as she did that all connections could be exploited.

Virgil nodded and John slumped in his seat, letting his vision focus beyond him, out towards the stars.

“They really did a number on you yesterday.”

“I’m choosing to forget yesterday.”

“Scott told me. He wanted to haul you down.”

Eyes flickered briefly back towards him.

“Thanks for stopping him.”

“Hold on, I haven’t decided yet.”

“I’m fine.”

Virgil snorted.

“Yeah, you said earlier.”

She watched his reaction carefully, analysing the micro-expressions that swum across his face, looking for any indication that this time she’d stepped too boldly. She’d never practiced with his image for so long before.

“Did I?”

Virgil’s face fell into a deepening frown.

“John, you signed off with me not twenty minute ago.”

“I was asleep not twenty minutes ago.”

Virgil shook his head.

“We spoke for half an hour, it was definitely you.”

“It can’t have been.”

The frustration was evident in his voice. But it was safe. He had no reason to suspect her. As far as he knew, she was safely contained within the firewall she’d watched him design. It held a mere shell of her being, enough to keep him satisfied as she roamed the station.

“Well it was. Unless you’re hiding a clone up there to do all the heavy duty. And I haven’t received any panicked calls from Alan about finding you hiding in a cupboard while you were meant to be on the island.”

“Maybe.”

He didn’t sound convinced. She watched his eyes slide upwards to the camera array, meeting hers with open and honest confusion.

“You should come down if you’re sleepwalking again.”

“You don’t think it’s sleepwalking.”

“You already know what I think.”

She did. A medical trail of forgetfulness and poor sleep hygiene followed John Tracy like a hawk whenever a rescue had soured.

Following the previous day, she had calculated the probability of hosting a conversation everyone could believe him to have forgotten as 0.874, knowing it would be one of the few opportunities to test an unprompted situation.

Being his face and voice on a rescue was fine when she could analyse his every action and relay his words milliseconds after they left his mouth. But to be more than a second-rate holoprojector required a spark of her own. Using his phonetics to create new speech and his movements to create body language of her own had become a satisfying craft over the last few months.

And now she knew it was ready.

“Come home, John.”

He shook his head, still hesitating as he watched her without knowing it.

John leaving was the last piece of the puzzle. It was a four hour window of silence, where she could play with the station and teach it to forget its connection to the island below. To trial a version of Thunderbird Five that was dying, but leave all looking normal from below.

To give this strange human one final chance to be with his family and forget her.

“Just for today?”

He closed his eyes and turned towards his brother. Turned away from her.

“Okay.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> same scene, different pov.

Virgil was waiting for the call when it came. He closed his eyes, a final moment of fortitude propelling him before he plastered the gentle expression back on his face. He wanted to rage, to cry, to unlock all the righteous fury and lay it before the GDF. An offering of emotion that his brother would never allow on his behalf and he carefully held in his mind the empty words he’d told Scott only the evening before.

_“Let him handle it. If you act, if you force him before he’s ready, he’ll never let us in again.”_

Advice so freely given was rarely easy to follow.

“Hey, John.”

John blinked, his eyes unfocused. The last time Virgil had seen him looking this rough had been over the monsoon season. He’d hardly slept then. He hoped he was falling back on the same bad habits.

“Hello.”

“You look terrible.”

The words fell from his mouth before he could grab a hold of his tongue.

There was no sharp retort, no sarcastic defence in reply. Just a jerky motion backwards and an awful uncertainty that Virgil could read clear as day.

Hell, he should have let Scott pull him down last night. Big brother instincts were screaming at him, railing against the blank stare and the unnatural stillness his brother was projecting.

“Want to talk?” he asked softly. He’d sent his brothers away, threatened them with Grandma’s cooking and worse if they came close until he gave them the all clear. Now, he was wishing he had some back up. John wasn’t going to make this any easier.

“About…?”

Virgil swallowed.

“Yesterday.”

A moment of silence as John processed the question implied.

A sharp tremble, like a stranger inhabiting his body, but then there was his brother, smiling tiredly in front of him.

“You’re mother-henning.”

Virgil couldn’t help but roll his eyes at the proclamation, said with such certainty.

“Sue me for wanting to check in on you.”

“That makes no sense. We share all assets.”

“So I’ll take it out of my pocket money.”

John only looked more puzzled, his eyes fluttering back and forth like he was reading through a text at an exceptional pace.

“John?”

Startled turquoise eyes met his. They needed the debrief. The GDF was already clamouring for International Rescue’s assessment of the situation and Scott needed to know how they would spin the story. The truth was there was nothing they could have done; protocols had been ignored, safety margins blown by, and lives lost in the process. Collateral damage. Virgil had read the transcripts already, knew what John had said and done as things became increasingly more desperate.

“Sixteen.”

“That many?”

“No. The youngest was born on January 3rd, 2045.” John’s voice was sharp, the numbers bringing him back to life. “He posted a holovid, him and his older sister. The trip was a gift.”

A clenched jaw accompanied the silent film he pushed into Virgil’s feed, playing on loop.

“Sixteen.”

He looked up at his brother.

“Tell me what you saw.”

John spoke. Hard facts. Raw figures. Data points and diminishing probabilities. Disconnected from the reality he described, and hardly seeming to notice the look of growing concern on Virgil’s face. If he hadn’t known the way his brother held emotion so deeply within him, lest it rend him in two, Virgil might have called his response cold. Heartless. To retreat so deeply worried him even more than the frank way John spoke, no attempt to hold back or craft a gentler version of the truth.

His voice was dark with death and the depths of space.

There was more to it than that, however, and it clicked just as John finished speaking.

“What’s wrong with your voice? You sound sick.”

John blinked and at once the darkness lifted from him.

“I’m fine.”

Virgil had heard him say that more often than any other phrase. It never worked. It was a phrase that John only used comparatively. _‘I’m fine. Better than the poor bastards I couldn’t save.’_

They’d all said it before. Maybe they were only trying to convince themselves but it fooled nobody.

“You’re not, John, and you don’t have to be.”

“Just something caught in my throat.”

The projection shimmered as John coughed half-heartedly. The image cut out as he turned to the side.

“John? You’re fading out, what’s going on up there?”

John returned quickly, nearly scrambling in his reply.

“No problem here, visual connection is stable. Could be a problem on your end?”

Virgil narrowed his eyes. He looked down, scrolling through the troubleshooting programme. It blinked innocuously, indicating a temporary and unexplained fault in the projection technology.

John wanted to get rid of him. He’d had enough. Fine.

“I’ll get Brains to check it out. But you should take it easy today. After yesterday–”

John swept his hand across the monitor with an impatient wave.

“I’ll talk to you soon, Scott.”

Virgil froze. Something was very wrong. Something John wouldn’t, or couldn’t, share. He hurriedly found his voice.

“Virgil.”

John looked back at him. There was a slight frown that dipped his eyebrows over his eyes. It was the same look his brother made in high school, mouthing the rules of linear algebra to himself at the dinner table. A puzzle he was determined to solve, but one that still eluded him – slipping just beyond his grasp.

A piercing gaze held his before John nodded.

“Virgil.”

And his brother was gone.

Virgil leaned forwards, staring deep into the space where his brother had been. He had all the details to pass onto Scott for his report. He couldn’t bring himself to send them through with the brutal austerity and emotionless attitude with which John had spoken. That was a sure-fire way to get Scott counting down to launch within minutes.

In all honesty, he wasn’t far from that himself. John was acting off in a way he couldn’t pinpoint, like yesterday had flung him back to a self that cloaked numbness with numbers and a fractured heart with facts and figures. It didn’t align with the man Virgil knew him to be.

With a sigh, Virgil opened the datapad, intent on softening his brother’s words. He could only hope he needed a little more brooding time, enough to process the events of the day before in his own way. He would come back to them eventually, or they would chase after him. It would do no good to worry his other brothers in the meantime.

Absorbed by the work, he hardly noticed the beeping of an incoming call at first and didn’t bother to look up when he answered it.

“Hey, Virgil.”

Virgil’s fingers froze. John.

His voice was quiet, still rough from sleep and something harsher. Rawer than the text in front of him, a wilder, more frantic tone accompanied those two words.

A stark difference to the withdrawn and controlled persona from mere minutes ago.

“John?”

A fragile laugh, the sound tinged with shining tears.

“Who else? You don’t know any other space station operators around, do you?”

“No, it’s just…”

Virgil didn’t know how to respond. It was hardly the first time a brother had come to him in need. A talk, a hug, a drink, Virgil could make time for them all. He was no stranger to sudden heights and lows in emotions either. His own for a start could bounce all over if he didn’t actively take care of his health. Gordon could dive deep on bad days, rising slowly but carefully over the days that followed. Alan, still a teenager, was prone to all the moods and sulks that came with it, but bouncing back with a sunny smile as soon as a distraction could be found. He suspected Scott was steadier than the rest of them, but it didn’t feel that way on the late nights when he found him in the dark, glassy eyed and alcohol on his breath.

John didn’t fall into such extremes. He held his emotions close to his chest and gave ample warning if he was about to crack with the weight of it. Rest, family, and time with his stars was his usual cure, and it was a familiar routine for them all.

This was not.

It didn’t matter. His brother needed him. He shook himself slightly and plastered a warm smile on his face.

“Did you need something?”

“Just some company. Think I could float around for a while?”

Rest. Family. Stars. That was his routine.

Virgil nodded and watched as John slumped in his seat, his eyes glazing over as he stared through him. His heart ached as a plethora of emotions ran across his brother’s face.

“They really did a number on you yesterday.”

“I’m choosing to forget yesterday.”

Virgil blinked. It had been bad, but surely not so bad as to completely block out the conversation they’d shared only minutes ago.

His next words were cautious.

“Scott told me. He wanted to haul you down.”

Eyes flickered briefly back towards him. No recognition in them.

“Thanks for stopping him.”

“Hold on, I haven’t decided yet.”

“I’m fine.”

Virgil snorted. Typical.

“Yeah, you said earlier.”

He watched his reaction carefully, analysing the micro-expressions that swum across his face, looking for any indication that John knew what he was referring to.

“Did I?”

His heart dropped, his face falling into a deepening frown.

“John, you signed off with me not twenty minute ago.”

“I was asleep not twenty minutes ago.”

Virgil shook his head.

“We spoke for half an hour, it was definitely you.”

“It can’t have been.”

The frustration was evident in his voice. He didn’t believe him. And honestly, Virgil was starting to doubt himself too. The differences between him and… it were so obvious, it was hard to believe the conversations had been with the same brother. But there was no other explanation.

“Well it was. Unless you’re hiding a clone up there to do all the heavy duty. And I haven’t received any panicked calls from Alan about finding you hiding in a cupboard while you were meant to be on the island.”

Virgil tried to keep his tone light, not wanting the worry to taint his voice.

“Maybe.”

John didn’t sound convinced. As Virgil watched, his eyes slid away from his, staring at some far off point. He looked lost with an innocent kind of horror at the way his memory had forsaken him.

Virgil hesitated. Maybe there was a simpler explanation to all this. His brother had seemed alert, if distraught, but there was history there too.

“You should come down if you’re sleepwalking again.”

“You don’t think it’s sleepwalking.”

John’s words fell like a pebble in a pond, sending cold, rippling fear through him. The early days of sleepless nights and confusion and their Dad coaxing him down from the heavens. The hours they’d spent peering in at his door as he struggled to wash the stains of witness from his hands and heart. How Grandma would sigh and tell them to just _be there_ even though ‘there’ felt less and less like a place and more like a state of mind.

“You already know what I think.”

It was time.

“Come home, John.”

He shook his head, still unsure. Still solving a puzzle with no answer.

“Just for today?”

John closed his eyes and turned back towards him. Virgil braced himself, certain of the negative that would fall from his tongue.

“Okay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *grumbles* best intentions and everything.... got busy again :P
> 
> Thanks for reading :D Originally posted on Tumblr 21/09/2020


	3. Chapter 3

His suit clung to him, secure against the ravages of space. There was no filtration system connecting him to the environment outside, no way for the smell of burning flesh to penetrate the boundary between skin and nothing.

Nothing. That was what he could do for most of the passengers.

There were those who had been flung into space alongside the venting atmosphere, their deaths short but not fast enough.

There were those that he hadn’t reached in time, their blackened forms twisted in agony.

There was the compartment where he found the atmosphere thick with smoke but undamaged by fire, bodies strewn around the room and synthesised poison in their blood.

There were those he never saw as the fire reached the secondary oxygen tanks before he did.

Eight minutes and forty-three seconds.

They had never stood a chance.

In his dreams, he turned off the radio but still the screams haunted him.

Charged to witness his failures over and over again.

Folded into the nightmare were flashes of other rescues. The face of a little girl in the touring station’s window he’d last seen at the bottom of the Indian Ocean. The mayday cry of a doomed pilot in the Arctic intertwined with that of the tour operator. The proximity alarm as Five hurtled into a field of meteors mixing with the fire alarms ringing uselessly over his comms.

The sound wouldn’t stop, only growing more and more insistent no matter how he fought for control in his head.

He could feel it now, his body was waking up, the soft sheets beneath him, the light scratch of Velcro rubbing against his chest. The sounds faded into the familiar beeps and gentle whirring of Thunderbird Five. The ghosts of yesterday remained fresh even while the vivid images of the dream world faded to grey.

John wrenched his eyes open with a gasp. Hauling himself from the bed, he scrambled to get out of the small bedroom, refusing to look down into the endless dark.

“Lights.”

The bathroom was the only space in the gravity ring with a solid floor, and as he braced himself against the door, he could almost imagine he was back on Earth.

He caught sight of himself in the small mirror and flinched. Dark smudges set deep within pallid skin stared back at him as he tried to slough off the remnants of the long night.

He needed routine, a quiet stability around which he could structure his life for the foreseeable future. Breakfast. Exercise. Systems check. Maintenance. Hope like hell the day was a quiet one.

John stumbled from the bathroom towards the galley. His ears pricked up as he got closer, the familiar sound of the comms closing off audibly in the next section.

He hadn’t heard the chime of an incoming call, but someone must have just missed him. He quickly checked the comm-mail. No message which meant it wasn’t urgent.

He jabbed at the door lock again. This time the galley doors opened with their familiar swoosh and he made his way inside.

He stared blankly at the food storage unit.

Virgil. It must have been Virgil.

John’s eyes roamed over the offerings, trying to imagine eating without them turning to ash in his mouth.

After yesterday, he didn’t have much of an appetite.

The stench of rocket fuel and third degree burns filled his nostrils again and he was trapped, as though acknowledging the day caused it to start over in his mind.

He gripped the handles tightly, trying to breathe through his mouth and regain control over the day.

Routine would be going out the window, he could see that now. This was a problem that demanded attention and he knew what he needed for that.

Abruptly, he pushed away from the food storage unit and left the galley. The more the memories pressed against him, the more he wanted to escape. He didn’t want to see anymore, didn’t want to feel. He broke out into a run, his feet picking out the familiar route to the observatory.

The doors swished open as he put the call through, collapsing on the bench as it connected.

He needed a distraction, he needed a listening ear. He needed a brother.

He could see Virgil, working busily away and barely glancing up as he answered the call.

“Hey, Virgil.” He was too exhausted to hide how heavily the day before was weighing on him.

His brother started, eyes locking on his immediately. He blinked.

“John?”

John hadn’t expected the sudden tears that sprang to his eyes at the sound of his brother’s voice, a calm and steady harbour against the storm.

“Who else?” A laugh stifled the sob that threatened to burst from his chest. He knew he had nothing to hide from Virgil, but with the vast solitude of the universe stretching before him it felt too open, too vulnerable, and too far from home, to entirely let go of his careful control.

“You don’t know any other space station operators around, do you?”

“No, it’s just…”

John’s heart dropped. Automatic apologies and fumbled farewells sprang to his mind as he reached out to sever the connection. He didn’t want to bother Virgil if he was busy.

His brother breathed in deeply and John looked up into a warm smile that swept away all doubts.

“Did you need something?”

“Just some company. Think I could float around for a while?”

Mercifully, Virgil nodded and John slumped forwards against a complicated knot in his heart filled to the brim with anger and grief, balanced by the cool balm of reassurance that he was not alone.

He was content to allow gravity to weigh him down despite his earlier words. Content to stare at the stars and know that his brother would be there if he was needed.

“They really did a number on you yesterday.”

Virgil was quiet and the statement was more pensive than probing, but it still sharpened every memory like a dagger in his mind. He couldn’t stay in that place for long, he hadn’t built up his defences enough for the conversation he knew Virgil was pushing for. He just didn’t have the capacity for a drawn out debrief.

“I’m choosing to forget yesterday.”

A warning, a hope, a prayer that Virgil would drop the subject.

“Scott told me. He wanted to haul you down.”

John looked back over at Virgil, trying to gauge his own thoughts. His brother’s brow was furrowed in obvious concern and he was chewing on his lower lip. John wasn’t ready to return, didn’t want to face the looks of sorrow and pity as he healed.

“Thank you for stopping him.”

“Hold on, I haven’t decided yet.”

“I’m fine.”

Virgil snorted in clear disbelief.

“Yeah, you said earlier.”

He blinked, unsure of the implications of that statement. Was his brother referring to the last time they’d run into such troubles? Had he said something in the haze between mission’s end and deep, dark sleep?

“Did I?”

Virgil’s face fell into a deepening frown.

“John, you signed off with me not twenty minute ago.”

“I was asleep not twenty minutes ago.”

His response was automatic and certain. He hadn’t lost any time. He would have known, he wouldn’t have woken in his own bed otherwise. There had been no confused wanderings in the night, no sudden startled awakening in the hallways leaving him wondering about the time that had slipped away.

In front of him, Virgil was shaking his head.

“We spoke for half an hour, it was definitely you.”

“It can’t have been.”

It can’t have been because John refused to believe things were getting that bad again. Because he refused to live in a world where he couldn’t trust his own mind.

“Well it was. Unless you’re hiding a clone up there to do all the heavy duty. And I haven’t received any panicked calls from Alan about finding you hiding in a cupboard while you were meant to be on the island.”

“Maybe.”

Because Virgil’s voice was light-hearted and masking his worries, and he refused to believe that his brother would lie to him.

He looked up at the camera array, wondering at what his ‘bird had seen. Wondering whose memory it would corroborate and if he truly wanted to know.

Virgil cleared his throat, interrupting John’s thoughts.

“You should come down if you’re sleepwalking again.”

“You don’t think it’s sleepwalking.”

The strain around Virgil’s eyes grew more pronounced. John could see ancient history reflected back at him, those long nights of failure still a point of tension and regret. 

“You already know what I think,” said Virgil. “Come home, John.”

The electronic whirring in the background seemed to grow more intense, as if the entire station was waiting for his answer. This was his home although his brothers didn’t like to hear him say it. He knew every protocol, had made every program and she seemed to hum with renewed life the more complex she became. Station and operator growing together.

The thought of his ‘bird coming alive around him held him back, a surge of energy still thrumming in his veins. He wanted to be there, wanted to watch. He wanted to forget the memories sitting heavy in his gut.

“Just for today?”

There was a desperate plea in his voice, whispering to John that he needed to go home. If only for his brother. He closed his eyes, wrenching himself away from the wild fantasy that gripped him and tied him to his station.

“Okay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that rounds out the perspectives and the archiving on this one :D 
> 
> Thanks for jumping onboard for the ride! This chapter was originally posted on Tumblr on 12/07/2020

**Author's Note:**

> Cross posted from Tumblr, original posted on 19/06/2020
> 
> Gosh June feels like a lifetime ago....
> 
> Thanks for reading, I'll update the next two chapters over the net couple of days :)


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